


'cause it feels so frightening (hits me like a bolt of lightning)

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: dares to claim the sky [3]
Category: Lab Rats (TV 2012), Lab Rats: Elite Force (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Amnesia, Angst, Body Horror, Bruises, Corpses, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Flashbacks, Graphic Description, I was trying to write something more graphic/horror-esque than normal, I'm a horrible person, I'm gonna destroy your hearts piece by little piece, I'm gonna shit on your happiness and you're gonna hate me, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, No Proofreading We Die Like Men, Non-Linear Narrative, Oops, Physical Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, This story was supposed to be the epilogue of "dare to claim the sky", Torture, abusive relationship was Kaz and the OC, also pay attention to the tags please, and it was supposed to be under 500 words, but look at this shit, fun fun fun right guys?, not Kaz and Chase, selective mutism, the summary is slightly misleading, things HAPPENED, this will not be pleasant but i will not completely destroy you, though the torture is...slightly more questionable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-07-08 01:10:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: Chase dies holding Kaz’s hand, breathes his last breath in his husband's arms.The first time they kiss, Chase’s mouth tastes like popcorn.The last time they kiss, his mouth tastes of blood.-A few days later Chase returns, but his gaze is too cold, his smile too sharp, his body too alive. Kaz knows it has to be an imposter standing before him, some other wannabe supervillain who somehow managed to kill the Captain of the Elite Force.“You can't fool me,” Kaz says raggedly as he resists the urge to touch Chase's face again. He can still see Chase’s dead face, feel the last heartbeat peter out against his fingers. “He's dead."-There is a web of white scars that is scattered across Kaz’s side from the time Isaac threw a wine glass at him and it broke across his skin. Chase used to run his fingers over those scars, telling Kaz that the damage would not make him any less beautiful. He would promise to never hurt Kaz like that.Now, Not-Chase kicks him in the stomach, layering bruises over top of old damages.-“Bree, love,” Alex says, and Bree turns to find her wife three shades paler than she's ever seen her.“Yes?”“Your brother- he's alive.”





	1. to show you the horror of staying alive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Duck_Life](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/gifts).



> Title is from the musical "Next to You" by the Of Rust & Bone.
> 
> So, I started working on the epilogue for "Dares to claim the sky" and shit got real messy, real fast. The story grew to over four thousand words with a whole lot of non-linear cuts and backstory, and suddenly this series needed a third part and entirely separate story to tell Kaz and Chase and the Civil War story. So, sorry for a new fic but hopefully you guys enjoy it well enough.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title is from the musical "Spies are Forever" by the Tin Can Brothers, specifically the "Torture Tango" song.

Chase was not Kaz’s first relationship. Not even his first boyfriend. Not by a long shot.  
  
-  
  
Once upon a time, there was a boy.  
  
There always is, isn’t there?  
  
-  
  
“How many times can someone fall in love?”  
  
“Why do you ask?”  
  
“Just thinking.”  
  
-  
  
His name was Issac, and everyone who knew about them, who cared about Kaz, even after he came out, thought that they were a match made in heaven.  
  
_He’s always talking about how much he loves you_ , they say to Kaz. _He’s always talking about how beautiful you are._  
  
-  
  
Tears, and then:  
  
“Fuck me harder.”  
  
_I want to forget._  
  
-  
  
Kaz knows what a toxic relationship looks like. He knows how fucked up things can get before superpowers even enter the story.  
  
-  
  
“There are no happy endings, Kaz, so you might as well just stay with me.”  
  
-  
  
Kaz knows a lot of things beyond just comic books.  
  
He knows that bruises can come in a variety of shapes and colors, knows what it's like for someone to kiss your bruised cheek as if it's the most beautiful thing in the world.  
  
He knows that words hurt just as much as hits.  
  
He knows that love can be a monster.  
  
-  
  
In the movies, the gay boy is either the comic relief, the joke, or a plot device, a suicide or tragedy to move the plot along.  
  
Kaz has certainly never been the funny one.  
  
-  
  
“Chase,” Kaz says, “Trust me on this- I like you. I like you as much as comic books, hot dogs, and Tecton’s sweet moves.”

Chase’s response is harsh. “I don’t trust you.”

Kaz’s eyes are wide and bright. “Chase, man, I promise I’m not kidding you-”

“You don’t want a computer,” Chase cuts him off, speaking matter-of-factly, and Kaz _knows_ that tone of voice, the way a voice just can't hold itself up after it's been broken for too long. “You don’t want my broken parts.”

“That ex of yours really fucked up, didn’t he?”

Chase instantly goes cold. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Kaz,” he says coldly, but Kaz _does_. He knows it better than he knows what it's like to be happy, how to love someone without it hurting.

“Wait, Chase,” Kaz protests, trying to follow after Chase, but Chase flings up a forcefield behind him and Kaz can’t pass. Chase runs off, blinking back tears, and Kaz is left standing alone.

Again.  
  
-  
  
Their story didn’t have a happy ending. True love stories never do- they just keep living and loving until one of them disappears off of the page.  
  
Kaz nearly faded away.  
  
-  
  
Sometimes, when he’s kissing Chase, when he’s soaking in the feeling of Chase pressed against the counter, when he remembers that Chase stayed instead of leaving him, he thinks of everything Issac wasn’t. He remembers that when he was knocked out during the fight to save Chase from the ‘droids, Chase had stayed and held his hand. He remembers that when he ended up bruised after one of their fights, Issac blamed him for the bruises he’d inflicted.

When Chase kisses Kaz, he feels like an actual human.

-  
  
Kaz realized that he couldn't wait for someone else to save him. He had to save himself. There was no waiting for a white knight.  
  
It took forever to escape, but he did it.  
  
-  
  
“Kazimerias, will you marry me?”  
  
“Yes, _please_ .”  
  
-  
  
Chase’s blood is soaking into Kaz’s fingertips, coating the ring he’s worn for five years, and Kaz can’t stop flashing back to Issac, how his ex would leave wounds that never healed. He remembers how every one of Issac’s words tore through him like a bullet.  
  
There is blood between his fingers, just as there was long ago.  
  
Chase can't die, or Issac would be right.  
  
(For the sake of Kaz's sanity, Issac can't be right.)

-

“We’ll make it out, I swear,” Chase promises, entwining his fingers with Kaz’s. Their rings _clink_ against each other just as their inhibitor cuffs do.

“I believe in the team,” Kaz says, and leans in to press a kiss to Chase’s grimy cheek. Then he leans his forehead against Chase’s. “And I believe in you.”

-

Chase dies holding Kaz’s hand, breathes his last breath in his husband's arms.

The first time they kiss, Chase’s mouth tastes like popcorn.

The last time they kiss, his mouth tastes of blood.

-

They take Chase’s body out after leaving it in the cell for three meals, which Chase always said was spaced out one a day.

For three days Kaz has been kept in a room with the body of his husband as it cooled and became a corpse, and this is only the beginning of the torture.

-

A few days later Chase returns, but his gaze is too cold, his smile too sharp, his body too _alive_. Kaz knows it has to be an imposter standing before him, probably some relative of Roman and Riker’s or some other wannabe supervillain who somehow managed to kill the Captain of the Elite Force.

“You can't fool me,” Kaz says raggedly as he resists the urge to touch Chase's face again. He can still see Chase’s dead face, feel the last heartbeat peter out against his fingers. “He's dead. He died in my arms. I know you're just shapeshifters pretending to be him.”

“But Kaz,” Chase- no, Not-Chase- says to him, leaning down with that awkward smile on his lips, “I survived and I miss you.”

“Get out!” Kaz shouts, “Get out, you’re not him, you _killed_ my husband, get the _fuck_ out!”

Not-Chase sneers. “You’re a fool, Kazimieras Davenport.” He raises his hand and Kaz feels pain arc across his back, seep deep into his bones, sear his skull.

After what seems like an infinity of agony, Kaz is left trembling on the ground, body unable to keep from shuddering from the aftershocks running through his back.

And Not-Chase leaves.

-

Not-Chase keeps returning, saying worse and worse things every time.

"You couldn't even break a pair of cuffs?" Not-Chase says, mouth curled in disappointment as he leans against the wall of the cell. "Fat lot of good you are."

-

Sometimes Not-Chase shocks Kaz. Sometimes Not-Chase beats him. But Not-Chase always,  _always_ slings insults.

And they wear at Kaz. Having to see his dead husband's face and his dead husband's voice call him pitiful, call him worthless- it's getting harder and harder to remind himself that this creature is an impostor.

-

“You're stupid,” Not-Chase sneers as he uses his hand to press down on all of Kaz's most sensitive pain points. “You can’t get out of a pair of cuffs, you couldn’t save us, you’re a worthless piece of shit."

-

Kaz begins to break.

-

There is a web of white scars that is scattered across Kaz’s side from the time Isaac threw a wine glass at him and it broke across his skin. Chase used to run his fingers over those scars, telling Kaz that the damage would not make him any less beautiful. He would promise to never hurt Kaz like that.

Now, Not-Chase kicks him in the stomach, layering bruises over top of old damages. He uses his molecular kinesis to pick apart Kaz, uses his super senses to pick up on Kaz’s vulnerabilities.

(Kaz doesn’t scream. He can’t give Not-Chase that satisfaction.)

 

One time, after a beating, Not-Chase picks up Kaz with his molecular kinesis and holds him against the wall. Then he leans in and kisses the bruise on Kaz´s cheek, gray eyes cold.

“This is the most beautiful thing about you,” Not-Chase says, fingers tapping the bruise, and Kaz’s eyes burn, tears pushing past the dam he has attempted to built. He can’t hold tears back anymore, not when Chase is using his worst secrets against him.

He only ever told Chase that, curled up in bed one night after a bad battle with a supervillain. He has never told anyone else what Isaac did, the specific, intimate ways he hurt.

And Kaz knows: this is the face, the words, the _touch_ that will break him.

-

“You _bitch_ . How _dare_ you throw what we had away?”

“You're killing me, Isaac. I can't let you destroy me.”

-

“I don't love you anymore, you worthless coward,” Chase says, and it's Isaac all over again and it wasn't supposed to be because this is Chase, his _husband_ , who swore never to hurt him-

Chase tosses his ring into the dirt at the bottom of the cell and Kaz can't breathe anymore.

-

“Chase,” Kaz begs through tears, “Please don’t do this, I love you, please _stop_ -”

His words are choked off when Chase raises his hand and he finds his jaw being forced shut by his husband's molecular kinesis. A scream wedges itself past his shut lips.

“I don’t want to hear your cowardly begging,” Chase spits, and Kaz can barely breathe, much less speak.

-

Kaz does not speak another word after that.

-

Kaz has finally been destroyed.

* * *

When Oliver finds Kaz in a cell beneath the shell of an old gas station, he doesn't know who he is. There is a boy trapped somewhere in this insane husk of a body, buried beneath bruises and burns and scars, but his mind has snapped. He is merely a shell of the superhero, of the _man_ , he used to be.

He is mute, unable to speak, and he barely reacts to any stimuli.

("Where's Chase?" Bree asks desperately when they find Kaz, but all they get is a flinch and a muffled scream.)

 _Selective mutism,_ Mr. Davenport and the doctors at Mighty Med diagnose him, but Oliver doesn’t even know if that’s accurate to the amount of damage done to Kaz.

They check his nerve endings, and he has all the physical capability to still use his superpowers, but Kaz never lights a single flame.

Kaz barely moves, almost never leaves his room, fades away.

 

And Oliver burns down the world to avenge him.

-

Oliver rebels against Davenport, taking most of the original crop of heroes with him. Only Skylar remains, determined to defend the Good that she left her planet for.

-

There is a Civil War raging, with Donald, Douglas, Skylar, the entirety of the Bionic Island, and a whole new crop of bionics and superheroes on their side.

On Oliver’s side, there are only Oliver, Bree, Alex, Adam, Leo, Spin, Bob, and Daniel. Kaz is incapacitated, and Chase is gone.

It’s a guerilla war fought in the name of the broken heroes, the dead soldiers, the lost memories. It’s a war they cannot afford to lose.

-

Tasha visits under the cover of night, greeting all of them with embraces. Her gaze is drawn to Kaz's room, though, to the man she once attended the wedding of.

After dinner, she asks: "Can I..." she swallows. "Can I just hug him, please?"

"You can try," Oliver says, and she sees the pained pinch of his features. She sees the weight of the world on this 28-year-old's shoulders, and she wonders where the past ten years went. She wonders where all of these childhoods went, wonders how all of these kids were made into soldiers and spies and guerilla fighters. (Daniel, Spin, and Bob are under 24 years old. This war has been raging for three years- how much longer is it going to last?) She wonders if her daughter, only ten-years-old, is going to be dragged into this war just as her son and stepchildren were.

She wonders how many of these kids she's going to have to attend the funerals of. She's already buried her stepson- how many more of her children is she going to have to put in the ground?

 

Tasha comes out of Kaz's room, jaw set as she grabs her things to leave.

"I'm not going to tell Donald," Tasha says. Bree knows the sacrifice she's making, the lies she's signed up for, and she feels sympathy for her stepmother. Despite her own problems with Mr. Davenport, it wasn't easy cutting ties and fighting the only two fathers she's ever known. To play double agent against her husband, to go back to the mansion every night with knowledge of what they're hiding from him, must tear Tasha apart. "Kaz doesn't deserve that. _You_ guys don't deserve it."

Bree and Leo hug Tasha. "Thank you," Bree breathes.

"No problem," Tasha says, despite the tension Bree can see in her shoulders. Tasha looks between both of them, even glancing back at the back hallway where they're all crammed three to a room save Kaz, who only sleeps when he's alone. "I'm not going to let my husband destroy our children."

And then she leaves, pressing one last kiss to Leo's forehead as she goes. Leo doesn't protest as he did when they were younger.

-

They find the shifters who killed Chase, and one of them is still wearing his face.

Bree takes her time tormenting him, pulling him apart. He crumples under her hands, and by the end of it she has her brother’s blood under fingers.

“You don't deserve to wear his shoes, much less his face,” she spits, grinding her drill-fast heel into his ankle bone. She doesn't flinch as the bone shatters under the force of her body.

“You killed my brother and destroyed my brother-in-law. I'm gonna make you wish you had never been born.”

 

There is blood in Bree’s dreams. It sprays over everything, lays under the corpses of Adam and Alex and Chase and Leo and Oliver and Daniel and Tasha and everyone she’s ever cared for.

Sometimes, Chase’s corpse rises to face her. It looks her in the eyes, opens its mouth to show a gaping black hole.

“You didn’t rescue me,” Chase rasps, eye sockets dead and rotten. “You let me die and Kaz get tortured into insanity. You let us be _destroyed._ ”

Bree wishes she could scream, but in these nightmares she finds herself as mute as her brother-in-law.

-

The world changes. Bionic war fades to the wayside as the general public starts to treat bionic and super humans as equal. There arises a movement for the ethical treatment of the powered populations that eventually crosses national lines.

With the general population on Oliver’s side, the other superheroes find themselves no longer on the moral high ground.

Skylar and Douglas end up apologizing, but that doesn't make up for those who died in the process. Daniel and Bob are dead, Leo and Alex have permanent disabilities (Leo's legally deaf as he can only hear slightly out of his left ear, and Alex's left arm was blown off in a fight), and all of them suffer from severe PTSD.

Still, a ceasefire and an apology is better than the alternative.

-

Years later, an era later, a war later, Alex and Adam are on a mission to investigate strange goings-on at an abandoned shopping mall in rural Ohio. It’s just supposed to be a routine mission- fight a minor supervillain, make sure no civilians were harmed, clean up, and get out.

It takes only two hours to take down the supervillain- his only superpower is laser vision, and in between the two of them it’s almost a joke how easy it is to capture him. (Truthfully, they really only needed one of them to take him down, but after the paranoia fighting the Great Bionic War caused, no one ever goes out alone anymore.)

Then, of course, comes the security checks. It’s almost boring how much they _don’t_ find in these checks, but it _is_ a good safety precaution to check.

While running clearance checks, though, they discover a back door that had been hidden behind an old Burger King ad.

And beyond that door, they find a living nightmare.

-

“Bree, love,” Alex says, and Bree turns to find her wife three shades paler than she's ever seen her.

“Yes?”

“Your brother- he's alive.”

“There’s no fucking way.”

_That's not possible._

 


	2. I know that face, strange though it seems (younger and kinder, it haunts all my dreams)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title is from "I Know Those Eyes/This Man Is Dead" from the Count of Monte Cristo Musical.

It turns out there _is_ a fucking way.

-

Behind that door was a cell with a floor so grimy their uniform boots sank and squished through it. Alex nearly wanted to throw up at not only the layers of disgust, but the stench. This wasn’t just an abandoned closet- the mall had only been closed for two years. This grime was _years_ of ingrained dirt, of filth and decay.

Then something moved in the darkness and Adam and Alex instantly moved into defensive stances.

“What’s here?” Adam barked.

As the figure moved, they managed to make out that it was a person. It was hard to tell the color of their skin as their body was so covered in grime, but what skin was bare seemed to be super pale. Metal glinted by their wrists, shining in the dim light entering the room from the entrance they just walked through.

“Who are you?” Alex demanded.

“Help me, please,” the figure croaked, and something in their voice rang bells in Alex’s head.

She couldn’t place the voice as friend or foe, though, and thus repeated herself, a little more venom in her voice: “Who are you?”

“I’m Chase Davenport-”

 _Oh my god._ They didn’t need to hear another word as they tore through the grime to get to Chase.

They crouched down beside him, desperately searching his body. He was painfully thin, bones and ribs protruding everywhere, and grime streaked all available areas of his skin. The only clothes he had one were only wearing the filthiest pair of boxers imaginable and the metal cuffs that encircled his wrists.

He seemed destroyed, but he was somehow _alive._

The cuffs on Chase’s wrists crumbled under Adam’s hands as he pulled them off of Chase, trying to free his little brother from this horror.

“Chase, are you in there?” Adam asked, voice softer than Chase could ever remember hearing it.

Chase nodded. “I’m still here,” he said, though his brain was still somewhat scrambled by the after effects of the cuffs. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Alex and Adam exchanged a look. “Chase,” Alex said gently, “Your arm and leg are destroyed, and you’ve been held captive for years.”

Chase glanced down at his mangled arm and shoddily-shaped mechanical leg. His body was nothing like it was when he was first captured, but he could still remember most of his life from before Not-Kaz started-

“Kaz,” Chase said, “Where is he?”

“We’ll take you to him. Just let us get you food, clothing, and a shower first, okay?”

"Okay," Chase said.

-

His bionics are almost gone.

 _(Chase Davenport_ feels more like a character than his name. It doesn't quite seem to fit his paper-white complexion, prominent veins, and broken parts.)

His arms shake. He has to walk with a cane as he follows Alex Davenport up the elevator to the penthouse. She seems familiar to him, and he distantly remembers her being married to his sister.

He doesn’t remember much of anything before captivity. There are some memories, yes- a date with Kaz to the movies, their wedding, something to do with a forcefield- but they are all vague, blurred at the edges with little context to connect them. The damage of his bionics as well as years of torture has severely weakened his memory. He has had to focus on particular memories, particular people, and leave behind anything but the most important.

 _Kaz_ , he thinks, the word tasting sweet on his tongue. It's been his only source of happiness for years, his one source of sanity.

(Chase remembers the day when they knocked Kaz unconscious, placed a false memory in his head of Chase’s death, and dragged his body away to a different location.

Chase is scared of what happened to Kaz after they dragged him away. He is terrified as to what they did with the information they pulled from Chase's head.)

They had a telepath who ripped out people's worst secrets, their greatest weaknesses, and fed them to the shapeshifters.

After Kaz had disappeared, the shifter had turned into Haven and taunted Chase about their past, turned into Bree and mocked him for his weakness, turned into Mr. Davenport and rejected him and his sexuality.

Then the shifters had turned into Kaz and Kaz had-

Chase flinches away from the memory of the pain Fake-Kaz had put him through. He doesn't want to remember the pain his husband had put him through. He doesn't want to remember the pain anyone he cared about put him through.

Haven broke his heart. Kaz mangled his hand and burned up his leg and starved him.

 _But that wasn’t Kaz_ , he reminds himself, as he has reminded himself for years. The mantra has been the only thing to keep him sane. He has been reminding himself of the fact that Kaz is alive, that the real Kaz wouldn't hurt him, that Kaz's past has kept him from ever hurting someone on purpose. 

Chase and Alex emerge into an unfamiliar hallway. Alex told him something about how they moved into a new house in the years that a war was happening, but to be honest his brain isn't really processing much that isn't directly related to him or Kaz.

Then he sees his sister, and his brain skitters, skipping a few thoughts. 

“Oh my god,” Bree gasps, eyes shining. "Chase, you're really alive."

Chase nods, though no words come out of his mouth. He's not exactly sure how to get words to leave his mouth, to somehow communicate with his sister. It's been so long since he's seen her- she's so old, with crow's feet at the edges of her eyes and a few gray hairs threading her head. The angles of her face are sharper than he remembers, but perhaps that is just the vagueness of memory.

Then Bree glances down, and: “What the fuck happened to your arm?”

Chase glances down at his arm, at the burns that cover the entire limb from shoulder blade down to the tips of his fingers. It’s almost unrecognizable as something even approaching human, a burnt lump of something that is closer to cinder than flesh. Part of his fingers are gone, replaced by blackened stumps cauterized roughly by the fire that destroyed his arm.

(Kaz’s superpowers included fire and flight. During their relationship, Chase had always admired those aspects of Kaz’s personality, but there were multiple moments during his imprisonment that he wished Kaz’s powers had been something less destructive. It would have saved him from some measure of physical agony, in the end.)

“Torture,” Chase says, not wanting to elaborate. He doesn’t want to think of Kaz’s face on that shifter’s body, of the way Chase broke under interrogation because that was his _husband's_ face, his scorching hands-

Bree’s gaze is concerned, and Chase looks away from her eyes. He doesn't want to look at her, at the evidence of the years since he last remembers her.

"How is Kaz?" Chase says, and his words feel strange and heavy in his mouth. Guess that's what happens when the only people you interact with for years are your tormentors and yourself.

“Kaz has selective mutism,” Oliver says, voice heavy with resignation. “He hasn’t responded to us in years.”

Selective mutism- an anxiety disorder in which a person who is normally capable of speech cannot speak in specific situations or to specific people. The definition pops into Chase's head like facts about Oliver and Adam and Alex do not. 

"Show me him." His words are awkward and halting, but they come out. "Please. I need- I need to see him."

And Bree takes his hand and leads him down the hallway.

-

Chase sees his husband, mind broken, through the door, and he sets his jaw. “I can fix him,” he says, and despite his missing leg and mechanical left hand and a host of other issues, Bree can't summon the strength to fight him. This is her younger brother, dead for _years_. This is the brother she mourned, the brother she killed people in the name of.

“You sure?” Alex asks, and Chase nods, eyes glimmering with a little of that old confidence.

“He's not gone- he's locked somewhere in there, beyond the programming and destruction. He retreated to somewhere he couldn't be hurt.”

 _You can't be sure,_ Alex thinks, but then Chase says, "I know. I did the same."

He lets out a small breath

“I don’t need my bionics to save my husband,” Chase says, because the world is fucked up and he sounds confused but if there’s one thing he knows, it’s this. And Alex knows that surety- if Bree fell, Alex wouldn't need her bionics to save her.

“Chase,” Bree starts, and then stops. Alex watches her swallow and understands her desire to actually _do_ something. “Okay.”

Chase's shoulders slump in relief. "Thank you."

-

 

Kaz barely glances up at Chase as he enters the room, instead just continuing to stare at his legs.

“Kaz,” Chase says softly, sitting down on the edge of the bed. His banged metal leg thumps against the sheets hanging down from the side of the bed. "I'm here."

“You hurt me,” Kaz croaks in a voice that has been dead for years. He won’t look Chase in the eye, though, instead staring at Chase’s burned arm.

And Chase understands. Looking at Kaz is both a balm and a poison at the same time, the planes of his face almost too blinding to look at. This is the real Kaz, he knows, as he is no longer in that cell, but this face hurt him for so long.

Kaz leans forward and taps Chase's cheek. Chase freezes as Kaz's finger traces a path from Chase's cheekbone down to his jaw. Chase braces himself for Kaz's fingers to burn for a moment until his body catches up with the fact that this hand is gentle instead of sadistic, warm instead of scorching.

"You hurt me," Kaz repeats, finger moving its way back up to Chase's face to stop at Chase's cheek, where it resumes its tapping.

"Did he..." Chase can't even begin to put into words the psychological torture that he thinks they inflicted on Kaz. The telepath pulled so much from Chase's memories- they probably pulled all of Kaz's triggers and abuse memories from Chase's head as well.

"This is the most beautiful thing about you," Kaz recites, voice wooden, and Chase's heart breaks. He knows that the shifter took on his appearance to torment Kaz, but going that far, triggering the worst of Kaz's memories using the words of the man who nearly broke Kaz- that's the worst.

Chase reaches up slowly and carefully moves Kaz's hand into his. "I'm not going to hurt you," he promises, "I swear. I could never hurt you, Kaz. The person who hurt you was wearing my face, but they weren't me."

There are tears starting to fall down Kaz's face, but he doesn't seem to notice. "You forced my jaw shut," Kaz says, lifting his free hand slightly from his side, and Chase swallows back a scream. "You lifted your hand, and..." Kaz's mouth snaps shut.

"I'm so sorry, Kaz," Chase says.

The idea that Chase's memories- his abilities- were used to torture his husband, that they caused Kaz's selective mutism, is a horrifying idea to absorb.

His broken brain is having a hard time processing, but he does know that he has to make things right, somehow.

"How can I convince you that the person who tortured you wasn't me, that I'm your real husband, who would never hurt you?"

Kaz blinks. "Don't know," he mutters.

Chase swallows and reaches up slowly with his and Kaz's clasped hands.

"Would the man who hurt you ever do this?" Chase says, and he raises Kaz's hand to his mouth and presses a gentle kiss to his knuckles. He then raises their clasped hands to his heart, where he places Kaz's warm (not burning, Kaz would never scorch him like that) hand over his most vulnerable organ.

"You're not..." Kaz mutters, and Chase's breath catches in his throat. Maybe this could be it. Maybe years- he thinks, he can't be sure, because so much of what he knows is darkness and grime and pain- of horror can be over.

“Chase,” Kaz rasps, and Chase has never heard anything better than the words that come gasping out of his husband's throat next:

“You're alive.”

Chase is finally crying, collapsing into Kaz's arms. Kaz’s eyes are cloudy, confusion on his face, but his arms still wrap around Chase’s shoulders.

And a single flame dances across Kaz's damaged fingers.

-

“Chase,” Kaz finally says, one of his first intelligible words in seven years, and Oliver doesn't blink back tears. (He hasn't cried since Kaz broke and he probably won't ever again.) Instead, his hands clench into fists at his sides.

“He's back,” he whispers instead, and Spin, his protege, takes his hand.

“He is.”

* * *

That night, Bree pauses outside of Kaz’s room.

The door is open, and through it she can see Chase and Kaz curled up in bed, limbs entangled. They're both completely asleep, seemingly dead to the world, and she can't help but be thankful for the lack of screams as they sleep.

Bree remembers the first time she caught them making out with each other, making a mess of the sheets. Chase had propelled a pillow at her using his kinesis and she’d run out of the room, shouting congrats for “finally getting some, dude” behind her. It was a moment of true sibling bonding, of feeling like any normal kid for a rare moment in her life.

It’s been fifteen years since then. They’re far different adults than they were teenagers, with scars littering their skin and memories burdening their minds. He was held captive and tortured for seven years; she fought a war against her own family that resulted in the deaths of multiple relatives. Neither one of them is ever going to properly recover from this.

Bree can't help but feel like she failed. Chase has bionics- or at least, he _did_ , before whatever happened to him while he was captured- but that doesn't make a difference. He's always been her little brother. She was supposed to be able to protect him from getting hurt like this. 

Oliver stops next to her, dark shadows under her eyes, and she has the feeling that some of the same emotions are going through his head that are going through hers.

“We’ve been searching for seven years,” she says, “I can’t believe Chase is finally home.”

“And I can't believe that Kaz can finally talk again,” Oliver says, gaze softening as he looks at Kaz and Chase lying peacefully in bed.

"It took an entire war to get them back," Bree says, swallowing hard, thinking of all the deaths that have happened over the past years. She thinks of Bob and Daniel's dead faces, Leo's deafness, and Alex's missing left arm. She thinks about the desperation and isolation they'd felt as they'd fought against pretty much every other Bionic or Super hero in the world.

And the war wasn't entirely because they thought Kaz and Chase were dead- no, their disappearances may have been the spark that lit the powder keg, but their disappearances only revealed all the problems they'd been ignoring regarding how Mr. Davenport had been running things.

(To this day, Bree hasn't seen Mr. Davenport since the war ended and they signed the Accords. Douglas actually works with the team on tech, and she's seen Skylar around, had short conversations with her regarding the laws regarding Supers and Bionics, but Mr. Davenport? He's never been by to see Kaz, to apologize for what happened. She hasn't asked after him when Tasha visited, either. Bree can't bring herself to care about the man she used to call father.)

“They're gonna need so much therapy,” Bree says, “But at least they're together and alive and able to speak again."

“Yeah,” Oliver says, and lets out a deep breath. The weight of seven years of watching over Kaz and leading the fight against the world's greatest supers seems to slough off his shoulders. “At least there's that.”

In the end, there  _is_ this. There is her family, broken and scarred but still here. There is a lifetime of damage to be fixed, but there is a light in sight.

There is this, and this is enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a few other stories/scenes planned for this 'verse, but I'm really proud of this particular section of the series.

**Author's Note:**

> So, any ideas as to what happened to Chase?


End file.
